it ended with what looked like a big handshake between the president and john boehner. james rosen has the report live from the white house. hey, james. >> reporter: house minority leader nancy pelosi says congress wants to show a message of confidence to the markets and she said they should aim to strike a deal on the fiscal cliff by christmas. the special lasted just over an hour. president obama said nothing explicit about reining in entitlement spending. instead the chief executive spoke about approaching the deficit in a balanced way and talked about long-term impediments to growth. >> i think we are all aware that we have some urgent business to do. we have got to make sure that taxes don't go up on middle class families and our economy remains strong that we are creating jobs and that's an agenda democrats and republicans and independents, people all across the country share. >> reporter: republican leaders gave no indication they are willing to entertain the idea that the president wants them to, namely the raising of tax rates on some particular categories of i